


Silver and Orange

by PseudonymousBotched



Series: Demon's Run [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Doctor Whump, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Doctor, Self Harm, Suicide Attempt, Whump, angsty as hell, background nine/jack if you squint really hard, mature as hell, seriously don't read if you self harm and you wanna stay clean, the doctor uses they/them pronouns, triggering as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudonymousBotched/pseuds/PseudonymousBotched
Summary: The Doctor has a poor way of coping with flashbacks to the Time War. Specifically, they self harm - and tonight might be the night they finally go too far. Can Jack and Rose get to them in time?Rewritten. Part one of the Demon's Run series.





	Silver and Orange

The door to the black tiled bathroom was closed and locked. Inside, the Doctor was leaning against the wall, sans their leather jacket, hurriedly yanking their forest green shirt sleeve up over their left elbow. Something small and silver gleamed on the counter top next to them.

This was what it took to make the flashbacks stop – even now, the screams of the dying of Gallifrey were ringing in their ears. The Doctor picked up the razor blade and set it horizontally against their left wrist, parallel to similar white scars on their skin. Slowly they dragged the blade across their skin, noticing the subtle resistance, the faint white line left behind, the orange blood that took a moment to bubble up behind the blade.

The pleasure took a few seconds to hit, and the Doctor let out a quiet groaning sigh of relief. They leaned their head back against the wall, icy blue eyes half open and glazed over with an expression of pained euphoria. Concealed as they were, the Doctor had never been discovered cutting before. There had been a few close calls, but they had always been able to trust human nature and rules about closed bathroom doors. Now the TARDIS was silent, in the middle of what passed for night on the space/time ship; they would be able to do whatever they wanted undetected.

The anxiety gnawing away at their stomach was dissipating, but not fast enough. After a few moments, they lifted their head and set the blade against their wrist again. Slowly the thoughts rattling around in their brain began to disappear.

It was like a tape recorder that played in their brain constantly. Especially alongside remembering Gallifrey. They were stupid. They were an idiot. They were worthless. They were genocidal. They were dangerous to be around. They were unworthy of being loved. They were broken beyond repair. They just broke the people around them in return. They were putting Rose and Jack in danger just by being around them. These thoughts shouted at the Doctor from the depths of their brain and they couldn't ignore them.

But with each cut, they could drown them out. The endorphins from cutting sent shivers up the Doctor's spine, and they leaned their head back against the wall again, panting through slack lips and supporting their left wrist. An orderly list of orange tally marks ran down their inner left forearm, dripping thin orange rivulets down to their elbow. The black tiles of the floor were covered in small splatters of orange Time Lord blood.

The Doctor was shivering, and not entirely from the pleasurable sensations of cutting. Memories from the Time War were running through their head, and as the pleasure faded, a sudden burst of self loathing filled them. Their stomach lurched, and they felt as if they were about to puke – 

They had left no more room on their left arm, so they briefly held the razor in their mouth long enough to hike up the sleeve on their right arm. Then they set the razor blade to their right forearm rather clumsily. They weren't left handed by any stretch of the imagination, and these cuts were longer and more ragged.

The Doctor hissed in pain, but their vicious attack on themself barely registered beyond that. They found themself leaning against the wall, panting for breath. Their forearms were throbbing with heat and pain now, and warm wet orange blood trickled down in thick rivulets. Small dark spots were swimming around the edges of their vision.

That … was a lot of blood. They'd gone deeper than they meant to. But the rush of pleasure was fantastic, rising up from somewhere near the pit of their stomach up their spine and up to the back of their brain, making every other thought short out. 

They closed their eyes and sagged against the wall, trusting it to hold them up instead of their slightly shaky legs. They really needed to stop now, said a small and still rational part of their brain. Tug down their shirt sleeve and walk away...

But the Doctor ignored it, argued with it. They were still in control, they said to themself. They could stop any time they wanted to, and they didn't want to just yet. Just one more cut, just one more...

The razor blade fell from numb fingers, and it was then that the Doctor finally processed that they had finally gone too far. 

They reached for a towel, wrapping it around their right forearm. They couldn't quite tell, because it was black (like everything else in their bathroom), but they thought their blood soaked through it in minutes. Orange blood was running down their fingers now.

It was then that the Doctor fainted. They didn't go easily. First they stumbled backward away from the sink to lean a shoulder against the wall again, because their legs felt shaky and they weren't entirely sure they would support them. When that didn't help, they leaned their whole body against the wall, shaking uncontrollably. Their vision was swimming, and their ears were ringing. They could feel that their face had gone pale and their extremities felt cold. They didn't think to call out for help – even now, they were still proud enough to want to conceal what they'd done. Their chest heaving, their icy blue eyes rolled back in their head – and the Doctor went down like a marionette with the strings cut.

Out of the darkness, the Doctor was struggling back into consciousness when they heard a man gasp and footsteps rushing to their side. “Oh, Doctor,” they heard Jack say, and his voice cracked. “Rose! Come help!”

They were faintly aware of the sounds of a belt being undone and something uncomfortable being fastened around their right elbow. “Gerrof me,” they slurred weakly, trying to move their arm away. “Mmmfine.”

“Shut up,” Jack snapped, “you've nearly killed yourself. Now hold still.”

Jack did something especially painful and the Doctor hissed in pain. “Sorry,” said Jack empathetically.

The Doctor came to enough to realize that Jack had taken off his own belt and was tightening it around their right elbow as a tourniquet. They lost the strength to hold their head up and keep looking so they let their head fall back down, but regretted it immediately as the tiles were quite hard and pain exploded across the back of their head.

Rose was at their side suddenly, pale in the corner of their vision and asking, “What do I do?”

“Fasten that around his other elbow,” Jack said, or the Doctor thought he did. Everything was going dark again.

They came to again with Jack hovering over their face. “C'mon, wake up,” he was saying urgently.

“Mmmwake,” slurred the Doctor, struggling to open their eyes. 

“You have to get up and walk. Can you do that?” Jack asked. Without waiting for an answer, he leveraged one of the Doctor's arms around him and pulled them to their feet. Rose took their other arm. The Doctor swayed dangerously, but the two of them kept them upright.

“We have to get him to the medical bay, immediately,” Jack spoke over the Doctor's shoulders to Rose. She nodded, face tight. 

The stress of standing was too much on the Doctor. Their hearts were racing and painful. Their head lolled backward and they sagged in the arms of Jack and Rose. The bathroom spun around them like a sick amusement park ride.

“Watch him, he's goin' down!” Jack said.

They were in the darkness for a third time, but it wasn't as long an outage as before. The Doctor came to a few seconds later. Afterward, they were never sure how they got to the medical bay. Despite the improvised tourniquets, thin rivulets of orange blood were still trickling down their arms. Every few seconds, they would drift in and out of consciousness. Jack and Rose struggled to carry them down the corridors while they were unconscious, and they struggled to walk while they were conscious. In this manner they eventually made it, where they collapsed onto the gurney waiting in the middle of the earth coloured room and tried to succumb to unconsciousness again.

“Oh no you don't Doctor,” said Jack, who came immediately over to them. “You stay awake, you hear me?”

But they couldn't, they simply couldn't...

The next time they woke up, the pain and throbbing in their lower arms was gone. The Doctor didn't open their eyes. Their thoughts were all fuzzy and nice and pleasant. It was fantastic. They wanted to bask in it forever. But soon they were aware of a pressure in their lower arms, and they tried to move them to see what it was. And they couldn't.

Their eyes snapped open in a panic. They recognized the medical bay on sight, and the medicinal chill of a Time Lord friendly painkiller and sedative in their veins. They tried to move their arms again, and realized that they were restrained at the elbow and wrist.

“I thought you might not like that,” said Jack wearily. He stepped into the Doctor's view, and he looked like he hadn't had about three night's worth of sleep. “But it's to keep you from tearing the stitches open. How much do you remember?”

The Doctor didn't reply. They did search their memory – they didn't remember anything about how Jack and Rose had apparently saved their life.

Jack sighed. “Not going to talk, huh? Okay then.”

An awful silence unfolded. The Doctor refused to meet Jack's eyes. 

“You scared me,” Jack said, and his voice cracked.

“... I'm sorry,” said the Doctor.

“Please don't do it again.”

The Doctor didn't say anything.

Jack sighed and came to sit on the side of the gurney. “Are we going to talk about it?”

The Doctor still didn't say anything. They determinedly kept their eyes fixed on the ceiling. 

“You promised you'd stopped,” Jack said.

“I had,” the Doctor said. “I just …”

“Just what?”

More silence. The Doctor pointlessly tested the restraints on their left arm.

“I want you alive, damn it,” Jack said. The Doctor risked glancing over to him and saw that he was close to tears. 

“Please don't cry – ” they said, and tried to reach for Jack, forgetting that they were tied down at the arms.

Jack angrily swiped at his face. “Doctor, I think it's time you need help. Official help.”

“I don't want help.”

“I know you don't but you need it. Please. Do it for me.”

The Doctor was silent.


End file.
